Tampa's First Movie Night Happened on the Hyde Park Side of the River

This fall, Tampa is celebrating 100 years of Tampa Theatre, and most of the attention is on the Downtown picture palace on Franklin Street. But the city's moviegoing started 29 years earlier, a short walk from Hyde Park. In December 1897, 2,000 people filled the opera house of the Tampa Bay Hotel Casino to watch Biograph Company short films. Tampa Bay Beacons reported that the films looked so lifelike the audience gasped.

That building is gone. The story it started is now on display a few hundred feet from where it stood. On October 3, 2026, the Henry B. Plant Museum opened "Cigar City Cinema: Tampa Goes to the Movies, 1897-1936" at 401 W. Kennedy Blvd. The museum's homepage lists the run through February 28, 2027, though the exhibit's own page prints 2026, so it's worth confirming the closing date with the museum. It is a centennial show for Tampa Theatre, but it is built around the west bank's earlier claim. Its first chapter happens on the old hotel grounds, and that's the best reason for anyone living nearby to go early and go more than once.

A Casino Built for Winter Guests

Henry Plant built the Tampa Bay Casino in 1896 on the hotel grounds, between the Tampa Bay Hotel and the Hillsborough River. According to the museum's own history, it was much more than a theater. Along with the 2,000-seat opera house, it had a heated swimming pool, a bowling alley, spa facilities and card rooms. It was meant to give the hotel's winter guests something to do. When projected film arrived, the Casino already had the one thing early movies needed most: a big room full of seats and an audience used to variety programs.

The museum says the Casino hosted the city's first theatrical film presentation in 1897. For about the next dozen years, local audiences watched movies grow there, from shorts to the first feature-length films to the sprawling epics of D.W. Griffith. Before Tampa had a movie palace, it had a hotel entertainment hall on the riverbank where people learned what movies were.

The Timeline Across the River

Put the dates side by side and the overlap stands out. The Casino didn't close when Tampa Theatre opened. For 15 years, both buildings stood on opposite sides of the river.

The museum's chronology records that the Casino was destroyed by fire, not torn down on purpose. The museum places it on the river side of the old hotel, which is now Plant Hall. It does not mark an exact footprint inside today's Plant Park. So the closest you can get to standing where Tampa first watched a movie is the stretch of lawn between Plant Hall's minarets and the water.

Why the Story Starts in a Variety Hall

The exhibit makes a case about where movies came from. Museum director Charles McGraw Groh explained it to Tampa Bay Beacons:

"Opera houses and vaudeville theaters deserve primary credit for the spread of theatrical film presentations in Tampa and across the nation. Short films took the place of individual songs or skits in variety shows at the turn of the century."

That argument explains why the first room is in Hyde Park's backyard and not Downtown. Film in Tampa first showed up as one act on a hotel's entertainment bill, and only later got its own building. Groh told the Beacons that early filmmakers borrowed from the best and worst of vaudeville and minstrel traditions. The exhibit addresses that history directly, including rare artifacts from the Museum of the Moving Image that show how Griffith's film worked as propaganda.

The second half moves to 1926, when Tampa Theatre opened with a Wurlitzer organ and a full orchestra in the last years of silent film. From there it follows the arrival of sound and the theater's first decade of horror films, musicals, screwball comedies and the social commentary of directors such as King Vidor. The museum also points out that audiences shaped these spaces. People in Tampa worked Charlie Chaplin's image into community traditions, and early theaters like the Casino and Tampa Theatre became new kinds of social spaces. The Beacons noted that Tampa Theatre's gargoyles, statuary and painted starry sky could feel intimidating at first. Objects lent by the theater show how its employees and audiences turned it into a beloved community institution.

What You'll See in the Galleries

The exhibit shows some of the early films alongside original lobby cards, souvenir programs and rare ephemera, much of it on loan from the Museum of the Moving Image and other institutions. A rotating film presentation runs through the show, beginning with King Kong. Because that lineup rotates, a second visit later in the run may show you a different film than the first.

The setting matters too. The museum is inside the former Tampa Bay Hotel, which operated as a resort from 1891 to 1932. The building is a National Historic Landmark, and the museum displays the actual furnishings the hotel's first guests used. So you're looking at films first shown to hotel guests inside the hotel those guests stayed in.

Getting In, and When It Costs Nothing

The exhibit is included with regular museum admission. There's no separate ticket. Posted museum pricing:

• Adults, $12
• Seniors 65 and older, $10
• Students, $9
• Youth ages 4 to 12, $7
• Members and infants, free

From January through November, hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. The museum is closed Mondays. December hours are listed as to be determined. The museum also offers one free-admission Friday each month from 4:30 to 7 p.m., except in December. Up to four people can get in with a current EBT card, and members of participating Southeastern Reciprocal Membership museums are admitted too.

For neighbors, that free Friday evening is the easiest way in. It's late enough to come after work, and short enough that seeing the exhibit in pieces over several months makes sense.

Then Cross the River for Dracula

The partnership sends the story back across the river. Tampa Theatre is screening a series of films featured in the exhibit, starting with a matinee of Dracula on Sunday, October 25. Later screenings include the Oscar-winning Sunrise and Grand Hotel. Dates for those two have not been announced yet.

Tampa Theatre lists the 1931 Dracula at 2 p.m. in the Historic Duncan Auditorium. Tickets are $13 general admission or $10 for Tampa Theatre members, plus a $2 online service fee. At 4 p.m. the same day, the theater is also showing the Spanish-language Drácula in the Taylor Screening Room at the same prices. That listing doesn't say whether it belongs to the museum series.

Taken in order, a single weekend covers the whole timeline:

1. Saturday, October 24, at the Plant Museum. See the Casino-era films and the 1926 section, open until 5 p.m.
2. Sunday, October 25, at 2 p.m., at Tampa Theatre. Watch Dracula in the auditorium the exhibit describes.
3. Sunday, October 25, at 4 p.m. Stay for the Spanish-language Drácula in the Taylor Screening Room if you'd like a double feature.

The museum's own seasonal programs fall around that weekend. Its programs page lists An Eerie Evening at the Tampa Bay Hotel from 6 to 9 p.m. on October 22 through 24 and October 29 through 31. It lists the annual Victorian Christmas Stroll from November 28 through December 31, with the museum closed December 24 through 26. Neither listing shows a year, so check with the museum before planning around those dates.

For dinner after a Saturday at the museum, V Modern Italian just opened at 1701 W. North A St. in the Rome Collective. Creative Loafing reported that it began taking reservations on October 8 and serves until 1 a.m. on Saturdays.

Many Hyde Park homes have their own long histories. The story of a house can matter as much as its square footage, both for how it feels to live there and for how it sells. If you're curious how your home's history fits today's market, Gasparilla Gulf Estates is happy to talk it through over coffee, maybe after a free Friday at the museum. Contact Us.